Scams affect the lives of millions of people across the UK. People who are scammed often experience loneliness, shame and social isolation.

Friends Against Scams is a National Trading Standards (NTS) Scams Team initiative, which aims to protect and prevent people from becoming victims of scams by empowering communities to "Take a Stand Against Scams".

Friends Against Scams has been created to tackle the lack of scams awareness by providing information about scams and those who fall victim to them. This information enables communities and organisations to understand scams, talk about scams and cascade messages throughout communities about scams prevention and protection.

Friends Against Scams encourages communities and organisations to take the knowledge learnt and turn it into action.

Anybody can join Friends Against Scams and make a difference in their own way.

By
Professor Keith Brown- National Centre for Post Qualifying Social Work at
Bournemouth University

Financial scamming is one of, if not greatest, crime that we have ever
seen in the UK. The more we explore and research scamming the greater we
realise the issue is for the whole of society.

The impact scams have on victim is not just the amount of
money that is lost by individuals (approx. £10 Billion – yes, billion not
million), but the effect it can have on their relationships with their
families, loved ones and society.

Victims of this form of crime are often some of the most vulnerable
members of our society – lonely elderly people sometimes in the early stages of
dementia – and criminals are clearly targeting these people.

There is so much to be done to raise awareness of this type of crime, to
help protect and support victims and to find and develop ways to stop the crime
at source.

For these reasons, and because personally my family members have been
victims of this type of crime, I am extremely proud to be a Scambassador. It is
a privilege to be able to research, write and speak at events, raising
awareness of financial scamming and its consequences and to lead the national
research, working with major national organisations involved to try and stamp
out scamming.

Personally I am committed to using every resource and opportunity at my
disposal to eradicate this crime and I hope you too will join me and the
Friends Against Scams campaign to drive out financial scamming.